It is always refreshing at the start of a week to hope that change can be achieved over the next few days which will make our community more secure by the weekend.

However last week showed us how much change is needed and how vital it is for our MPs to speak out on matters such as peace and the NHS.

When the Foreign Secretary flew to America there was an important matter for him to address in the light of the impending change to the Iran nuclear deal or “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”.

This deal was clearly designed to improve peace in our world and bearing in mind how many co-signatories there were, any rejection by the USA would be seen as both an attack on Iran and the breaking of a deal with countries that it claims to be its allies.

As Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Brighton Kemp Town MP pointed out in the House of Commons on Wednesday, the day after Trump made his announcement, “First the Paris agreement and now the Iran deal. Does this show that the USA’s signature is not worth the paper it is written on?”

This reference to peace and environmental deals also raises the prospect that any trade deal with the USA is unlikely to be worth a great deal post Brexit!

The decision by Trump on Tuesday evening came after a phone call by Theresa May on Saturday and after Johnson held meetings with the American Secretary of State, Vice-President and their national security adviser.

The fact that Johnson also wrote some articles for American newspapers and appeared on several TV programmes and suggested that if Trump kept the deal intact he might be eligible for the Nobel Peace Prize was either him being very creative or perhaps more likely him showing a rather weak side to his character.

However, either way it did not make any difference. Thankfully there were contributions in the same debate on Wednesday from two other Sussex MPs.

Caroline Lucas spoke out, saying: “We all agree that Trump’s reckless decision has made the world a more dangerous place, but does the Foreign Secretary also agree that that makes the rule of international law even more important?

"Does he recognise the rank hypocrisy of Britain’s lecturing other countries that are seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, while we keep our own and indeed enhance them in direct contravention of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty?

"Is it not time that we joined those 122 countries that have been negotiating a nuclear-ban treaty at the UN and sought some world leadership on the world stage?”

It was disappointing but perhaps inevitable that Johnson claimed that our own nuclear weapons keep peace which is clearly hypocritical in the light of his comments regarding the Peace Prize if less nuclear weapons were to emerge.

The other Sussex MP who spoke during the debate was Nicholas Soames who reinforced the criticism of the President: “There is no doubt that Iranian interference in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Bahrain and elsewhere is a legitimate cause for concern, but does my Right Hon Friend agree that this is a very poor decision by the President, which flies in the face of the advice of his own people and of America’s most loyal allies?”

While none of these contributions will bring change to the White House it is vital that our MPs continue to put pressure on Ministers to realise that promises by Trump will be worthless in the future, to end our investments in nuclear weapons and end weapons sales to nations involved in the conflicts in the four nations Soames referred to.

Nicholas Soames also asked a question about our local NHS that was answered on Wednesday, that was shocking in terms of its content.

“To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to what he attributes the increase of 10,865 in the number of bed days lost due to delayed transfers of care in Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust in 2017 compared with 2015”

The answer offered a number of detailed areas which had seen huge increases. The only positive area was a reduction in the number of patient or family choices which in 2015 had led to 2,354 bed days and was reduced to 1,001 in 2017.

However the number of failures to complete assessments rose from 93 to 1,886 and the number of disputes rose from 65 to 807. It is clear from this response that our local decision makers and national funders need to address these enormous gaps in our provision.

The loss of these bed days is huge and must have cost a great deal, let alone the impact on the patients and their families!